Lost S06E06: The Bad Sayid (Get It? You Get It!)

Posted on Mar

First of all, my apologies to Jack. Last week, I complained about how a Jack episode was barely much better than a Kate episode, but I had completely forgotten about Sayid episodes! Oof, Sayid episodes. “I’m a trained assassin, but I’m also a poet, and the dichotomy is delicious” or whatever. It’s funny how people have spent years now debating why Hurley hasn’t lost any weight while stranded on the island, but no one seems bothered by Sayid’s hair’s consistent shininess. Unless there was an episode where Sawyer hoarded all the hair product in a secret hole in the sand, and Sayid traded him a gun for it? That might have been an episode that I just missed. But first let us start in bizarro LA, the epi-center of the multi-verse, where Sayid has just arrived at his lost lover Nadiya’s house, where he refuses to close the front door.

Seriously, could someone please close the door?

No one? I suppose maybe I don’t understand Iraqi-transplants-to-bizzaro-multi-verse-Los-Angeles culture. But wait, Nadiya is married to Sayid’s brother! What?! Oh, multi-verse, YOU HAVE GOT ME AGAIN. THINGS REMAIN DIFFERENT! They eat dinner and catch up about Australia (oh right, Australia) and then Sayid’s brother gets a phone call and is like “I have to take this, it’s business.” OK, take it, jeez. Excuse us, Warren Buffet. But then the children come running in, and they are like, “Sayid, we found a photo of our mom in your wallet.” Hey, no snooping! Someone should lash those kids to a tree and pull their fingernails out one by one! Sayid’s brother is in the other room with a very important business call, but he is like “You better not be talking about secret wallet photos over there or I will be so pissed.”

To be fair to Sayid’s brother, a strong relationship depends on trust that there are not so many secret wallet photos of your loved one out there in all the pockets. And in any case, that night he uses Sayid’s secret wallet photo shame to his advantage, because he wakes Sayid up at four in the morning (or thereabout, you should definitely check with the nerds at Lostipedia to find out exactly what time Sayid was woken up by his brother in the middle of the night, super important) and tells him that he owes some bad guys money. I KNEW IT! I knew his business phone call after dinner was trouble! After watching a few seasons of this show, you just really start to pick up on stuff. Anyway, Sayid is like, I’m not going to hurt someone just because you made a bad business decision, and his brother is like, “I know that you tortured people in Iraq.” Whoa. Uncool, bro. But then his brother is like, “if you won’t do it for me, do it for the secret photo that you carry in your wallet.” Ouchie.

After sending the kids off to school without torturing or assassinating them:

“Much like John Mayer, everything these hands touch explodes.”

Nadiya comes running out of the house with the news that her husband has been attacked. At 7:30 in the morning? Fair enough. This IS bizarro multi-verse LA, anything can happen. “He woke up this morning and his head was on upside down.” No rules. It was supposedly a mugging, but everyone knows better. Nadiya tells Sayid to leave it alone, and not go after the people who did this. Everyone sure loves to tell Sayid what to do (more of that back on the island). He is going to listen to her, but then the bad guys come looking for Sayid anyway. Apparently, they want to cook him breakfast! Hey, maybe we’ve got it all wrong, maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all! But Sayid is like, “I’m not hungry.”

Rude. Maybe the reason they turned to a life of crime is because people are always making them eat alone. Oh, and by the way, the main bad guy is the one who shot Ben’s daughter a couple seasons ago. Whuuuuuuuut! Anyway, blah blah blah, Sayid’s brother, money, crime bosses, whatever, as if we care. I mean, honestly, Lost, I’m sorry, but as far as I’m concerned, these bad guys can burn all of bizarro LA to the ground. It’s not my plane of existence! But Sayid kills all the bodyguards and the bad guy is like “Oh, OK, cool. Let’s just call it even.” He makes his most convincing don’t kill me face.

But Sayid is like, “UNCONVINCED.” And then the bad guy makes his most convincing I’m dying face.

Acting!

I guess the point of this is how Sayid is actually kind of evil at heart? There is more of this on the island, which I cannot wait to get back to, because bizarro LA is almost worse than regular LA, but we’re supposed to think that Sayid is a born killer who ultimately cannot change his violent ways. Personally, I just found that thug’s “don’t kill me face” to be really smug and shootable. It’s a face only a mother couldn’t shoot. Do you remember it? I’ll remind you.

See.

So Sayid is about to leave (peace!) when he hears noises coming from the walk-in cooler. And, as anyone who has just murdered three people in cold blood would, he checks it out.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! I’m just glad to see that Sun and Jin finally made it through customs at the airport. Apparently! Ugh, get me out of this stupid fucking Sideways Town. BACK TO THE ISLAND! Finally. So, Sayid goes to confront the ninja in his mysterious office. He is like “you tortured me, and I want to know why. But first, I want to know where you got those cheap, particle board bookshelves. Was it Target? Or perhaps Ikea?”

Another new mystery! Anyway, the ninja tells Sayid that the torture table is like a scale for good and evil and that Sayid was definitely a big fat evil. Haha, what? I mean, I’m just saying, what? The self-delusional moral gymnastics required to truly believe that a torture device is how you determine someone’s goodness is ridiculous. But there is no time for that, because suddenly a straight up NINJA BATTLE occurs.

It looks like Sayid is finally going to die (fingers crossed that this death sticks) because the ninja has trapped him in the classic ninja move known as paper-opener-to-neck, but then a baseball rolls off the table, and that is when shit gets REAL intense.

WHAT’S IN THE BASEBALL?! The ninja tells Sayid to leave the papier-mache temple and never come back, and Sayid is like, “done.” But before he can get out, Claire shows up. You know, after all of the secret passages or whatever, it turns out that it is very easy to just walk into that temple!
Later, Kate just walks right in. Everyone is coming and going as they damn well please and it’s almost as if the temple isn’t visible and accessible only to the righteous anymore. Claire says that the Locke Smoke Monster wants to talk to the ninja, and the ninja is like, if he wants to see me, tell him to come in, and Claire is like, no, he wants you to come to him, and the ninja is like, “uh, nice try, Claire.” He knows that if he steps outside of the ring of ash (this show, which I love, is getting SO HARD to take seriously) that the Locke Smoke Monster will kill him. And Claire is like, “then send someone who he won’t kill.” Wait, what? Does he or does he not want the ninja to come talk to him? Because sending someone else is different. You guys really should have figured this out ahead of time.

So now the ninja won’t let Sayid leave, instead he hands him a magic dagger that allows the person who holds it to shift through the sands of time. Didn’t Sayid ever wonder how an orphan child could become a prince?

Just kidding. That was a reference to something else that is ridiculously complicated and confusing.

But so, the ninja tells Sayid that he should go out into the jungle and find the smoke monster who will look like someone that Sayid knows, and he should plunge the dagger into the smoke monster’s chest before he is able to say anything, because if he says something then it is already too late, and so Sayid is like “I am definitely going to do this without asking any more questions.” Perfect. He goes out into the jungle right away, and runs into Kate, but for some reason he doesn’t plunge the dagger into her chest? A rare miss, Sayid. Then he sees Locke and he immediately plunges the dagger into his chest. How does Sayid know to do that? He really should have plunged the dagger into Kate’s chest, just to be sure. It doesn’t really work, though.

Uh oh, Sayid, I think your magic dagger is broken!* Locke Smoke Monster tells Sayid that Dogen (ninja) told him to do that because he knew that it wouldn’t work and that he had assumed Locke Smoke Monster would kill Sayid, and Sayid is like, shoot, I really thought that when he gave me this dagger and told me to go out into the jungle and immediately stab someone in the chest no questions asked that I’d thought this through pretty thoroughly, but it seems there was one tiny hidden loophole that I had not considered. Otherwise, you must admit, my plan was flawless. So now the Smoke Monster Locke convinces Sayid to go back to the temple and give everyone until midnight to leave and join Team Locke, or else they would all die, and again, without really spending too much time on it, Sayid is like, “I am definitely going to just go do this. I just read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, and sometimes snap decisions without any reflection are actually the smartest.”

Meanwhile, Kate is back at the temple. She checks in with Miles real quick, because I guess one of the rules of being in the temple is that you have to occasionally make small talk with Miles who will be playing some kind of game. Today: Solitaire! Miles is like, “oh man, Claire.” And Kate is like, “Claire?” And Miles is like, “Claire, definitely.” So Kate leaves Miles after the required two seconds of small talk and goes to find Claire in a pit. At first, they won’t let her in there, but then she smacks a nerd’s lunch tray out of his hands.

Seriously, Kate, like, rests her forearm against that nerd’s neck and he is like “Whatever you say! Will you let me carry your books? I’ll shine your locker, just don’t hurt me.” What a nerd. So Kate goes to see Claire, who is busy putting the lotion in the basket.

Kate tells Claire that she took Aaron off the island, and then basically like any new parent, won’t shut up about how awesome her kid is. I’m sure baby Aaron is a very special snowflake, and bravo to all new parents for being the first people in history to successfully achieve child birth. Meanwhile, Claire is like “SCARY GLARE.” She tells Kate that “he is coming” and that she isn’t the one who needs to be rescued. Yikes. Kate needs to be rescued, you guys. I guess?

So, people are packing up and leaving the temple. Byeee! Sayid has a nice sit down chat with Dogen next to the diarrhea hot tub and Dogen explains that he made a deal with Jacob to save his son’s life, but that he would have to come to the island and never see his son again. That is what is in the baseball. Dogen assumes that Sayid made a similar deal with Smoke Monster Locke to get Nadiya back. Sayid nods, and then shoulder checks Dogen into the pool and drowns him to death**.

“I’m glad we had this talk.” Then the nerd runs up and explains that Dogen was the only thing keeping the Smoke Monster out of the temple, and Sayid slits his throat and throws him into the hot tub. Sayid, no offense, but you’re being kind of a dick right now. Anyway, the Smoke Monster rushes through the temple killing everyone, because it’s midnight, and you know the rules! (I really don’t know the rules!) Tons of shit happens. Lapides shows up? With Ben? And that lady? And they find Miles and escape through the secret tunnel? And Miles tells Sun that Jin is alive and on the island and Sun is like “Oh my gosh,” because I guess she is still catching up with the past few episodes on Hulu or whatever and didn’t know that yet? And Kate is about to get killed by the Smoke Monster, but then she jumps into the pit with Claire and hangs from a rope ladder, because this season it is all about hanging from rope ladders.

When the smoke (monster) clears (boo), Sayid and Kate and Claire walk over the piles of dead bodies and find Locke waiting for them outside of the temple with his new pals. Hi guys! Fun party!

Haha. I bet Kate gets that look A LOT.

So just for the record, we are now six episodes into the FINAL SEASON, there are only 10 episodes left, and I feel more confused than I have ever felt and further from any semblance of a satisfying conclusion/understanding. Yay?

**Actually, as Videogum reader Max Silvestri pointed out, Sayid doesn’t stab Locke until after Locke says hello to him, and for the dagger to work he is supposed to stab before he says ANYTHING. So in fact Sayid fucked up, and Smoke Monster Locke is a liar, which makes sense, because of how jerks often lie. Although I still maintain that Sayid should have stabbed Kate with the dagger. JUST IN CASE.

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